


Love is for children

by solrosan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Barton Children - Freeform, Barton Family, Budapest, Gen, Origin Story, The Avengers (2012) Compliant, What Happened in Budapest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 19:39:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4637733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solrosan/pseuds/solrosan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha and Clint trust each other with their lives, but what will it take for them to trust each other with the rest?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> When I left the cinema after seeing _Age of Ultron_ I had three things I wanted to talk about, and write about, and theorize a gazillion times about. This fic is about two of those things, and it's because I've been thinking about these things that I ended up deep in the MCU fandom.
> 
> * * *

“Honey, I’m home.”

Natasha took off the headphones and hung them around her neck. “About time!” 

She watched Clint as he put down their takeout on the table next to the surveillance equipment. He had a perfectly good smirk on his face, but she’d known him for long enough now (they certainly had been living in this one-room apartment in Mogilev for long enough!) for Natasha to notice the subtle strain in his voice. And the short flash of sadness in his eyes. And she had seen it before, during the six months she had been working with him after she got her SHIELD clearance. It happened every time he came back with those words on his lips, every time a target had children. Every time they talked about what they would do when the missions were over and they got to go home. It happened a lot.

Clint sat down on his chair, putting his foot on the seat of hers and dug into the weird excuse for Thai food that he had brought. It was their favourite, but it wasn’t like the Thai food in the US. 

“What happened to them?” Natasha asked as she opened her own food container.

Clint reached for his soda. “Who?”

“Your family.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You know. Parents, car accident. Barney…” He shrugged, putting away the soda can again.

“Your child, Barton. What happened to your kid and your wife or girlfriend or… boyfriend, for all I know?”

Clint blinked once, staring blankly at her for a moment before looking away. “It was about a year before I was sent to, you know, kill you,” he started, pausing to clear his voice. “There was a traitor inside SHIELD. They– I don’t know how, but they found them. Killed them all. When I finally got there… It was— There was blood everywhere. Nicky was only two.”

His voice cracked. At first Natasha thought he was sobbing, but then she realised that he was just barely suppressing a giggle.

“You little shit,” Natasha said, pushing his foot off her chair. “That’s a terrible thing to make up!”

Clint started laughing. “I totally had you!”

“You didn’t!”

“I so did!” Clint wiped the tears from his eyes, taking a deep breath to stop laughing. “You need to get out more, Romanoff. This place is making you loopy.”

Natasha rolled her eyes, muttering insults in Russian she was sure he knew by now. Clint just kept chuckling, shoving more food into his mouth. He might be an idiot, but he also might be right. They had been here for a long time, and since her Belarusian was far better than his, she’d been the one doing most of the listening. Perhaps she was losing her focus.

Loopy or not, though, Natasha noted that Clint stopped shouting “Honey, I’m home” when he came back after that.


	2. Budapest

Budapest was not very entertaining in February. It was grey, grey and… grey. The mission wasn’t much better. For months, SHIELD had been tracking an arms dealer organisation that was buying and selling uranium, and now, Natasha and Clint had been sent to apprehend – or kidnap – the ringleader. Natasha couldn’t say she had been overly excited about the assignment, but Clint had flat-out refused. Natasha had overheard an argument between him and Fury before they left, but neither Clint nor Fury had wanted to acknowledge it when she had asked about it. She understood and accepted that not everyone needed to know everything all the time, but when Clint denied that there was something he wasn’t telling her… well, she didn’t like that. 

The mission was, as expected, dreadfully boring and they spent most of their time in a poorly insulated attic. It wasn’t good for their moods, and it left room for too much time to think as they waited for their window to strike. Clint had barely said a word for the three days they had been there, and still refused to admit that there was a problem or that he had argued with Fury. 

They had been working together for almost two years, and Clint had always made a number about the importance of honesty and trust. She _had_ to be honest with him. She _could_ trust him. He _was_ honest with her. He _did_ trust her. Natasha would be really bothered with his obvious hypocrisy right now, if it wasn’t for the fact that it was painfully clear that there was something wrong. It made her worried and on her guard, rather than annoyed.

“ _Agent Romanoff._ ”

Fury’s voice in her ear made Natasha jump. Embarrassed, she looked around to see if Clint had noticed, but he seemed preoccupied with armour care. They were officially in radio silence, so it wasn’t all that strange that she was startled by the director. Still, she shouldn’t have reacted.

“Sir?” she said quietly. 

“ _What’s Agent Barton doing?_ ” 

Natasha looked over at Clint again. He didn’t seem to take any notice of the conversation, which probably meant he didn’t hear it. She frowned; why was Fury only talking to her?

“Nothing important,” she told Fury, and just like that he was gone from her ear.

Instead Clint flinched, and straightened up. “Sir? What’s—“

Natasha watched her partner as he went dead pale. Something was wrong. Her insides tied themselves into a hard knot, and she barely noticed how her hand went to her gun. 

“No,” Clint breathed. “No, no, no, no, no. It’s too soon, she’s only in week 34—“

He swallowed, nodding along with what Fury told him. His lips were tightly pressed together, but his chin trembled and he kept blinking repeatedly. He was fighting tears, Natasha realised, and she got up off the floor.

Clint cleared his throat, and said with a surprisingly steady voice: “Is it a boy or a girl?”

Natasha stopped dead, staring. Clint flashed the briefest of smiles at Fury’s reply. 

“Can you put her on?” Clint then asked. A moment later a breath got stuck in his throat, and an actual smile appeared. “Hi,” he whispered, his voice uneven. “How are you? … This wasn’t how we planned it, honey… I’m so sorry. I’ll be home as soon as I can, okay? I’m sorry. I love you… Tell her too, would you? I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Natasha watched in silence, not making any moves to get closer. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make any sense of this. She knew what it sounded like, but it couldn’t be that. She had seen his file; she had read his file, and there was no mention of this. She had even _asked him_. Explicitly. And he had denied it. Because he had, right? She tried running old conversations in her head, but she couldn’t focus. Not when Clint was… falling apart in front of her. Because he was, it wasn’t just his chin that trembled anymore, but his entire body. 

“Where’s Coop?” Clint rasped, and managed to laugh at the reply he got. “Don’t let him run you too hard, okay? And tell him daddy loves him… Thanks, Nick.”

Clint looked up to the ceiling. He exhaled slowly, rubbing his face with his hands. When he finally met Natasha’s eyes he looked completely wrecked.

“I have to go home,” he said, and without explanation he started to pack up his things.

Natasha took the last steps towards him. 

“Clint,” she said, putting her hand on his to make him stop, but he pushed her away. 

She grabbed his wrists, hard. “Clint.”

“Stop it,” he demanded, breaking free, fending off her next attempt to touch him.

She stood down, raising her hands to surrender. “Talk to me.”

Clint mouthed a couple of words, looking around the room as in hope of finding answers. When he met her eyes again, he looked completely lost and he whispered: “I have to go home.”

Natasha wrapped her arms around him, held him tight even though he tried to fight his way free. When he finally gave up, and instead leaned heavily against her, she realised that she was hugging him. That was a first. She couldn’t remember if she had honestly hugged anyone before. She probably hadn’t. For the longest time they just stood there; she could feel Clint’s breathing evening out and before she knew it, he was hugging her back. Desperately clinging to her.

“Do you want to tell me what’s happened?” Natasha whispered.

Clint shook his head.

“Is Fury babysitting your son?”

Clint pulled away from her hug with a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. He nodded, drying his eyes with his arm. Natasha felt a surprising affection washing over her at the confirmation. She would hang Clint from a bridge by his toes for not telling her any of this sooner, but now she smiled and shook her head.

“You know you can’t go home yet,” she then said, becoming more serious. “Our exit is in six days, and we can’t safely apprehend the target before that. Going after him now will risk the mission as a whole, and probably get you killed.”

“I know. I… know.”

“I’m sorry.”

Clint shrugged. 

“Congratulations on your baby girl,” Natasha said, and at that, Clint actually smiled.

* * *

They sat on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for something, but Natasha wasn’t sure what. They hadn’t said a word for hours. Natasha held Clint’s hand in her lap – partly to comfort him, but mostly to keep him from running off; she was genuinely worried that he would disappear if she let him out of her sight for too long.

“I should have been there,” Clint suddenly said, his voice low and hoarse. “It was a difficult pregnancy from the start. We thought we’d lose it in— in week twenty-three. And she’s not, she’s not been… She was so bad, I mean really sick. The first three months, it wasn’t like that with Coop.”

Natasha squeezed his hand. “What’s her name?”

“Laura.” Clint smiled briefly as he said the name. “You’d like her, she’s… You’d like her.” 

Natasha just squeezed his hand again. She highly doubted she’d like Laura, even more that Laura would like her. She didn’t play well with women. They were competition; if they survived, she didn’t. The mother of Clint’s children (Clint’s _children_!) would be different, obviously, but still. She didn’t play well with women. She didn’t quite know how to.

“Was she all right, when you talked to her?” she asked.

Clint nodded.

“And the baby?”

“She’s breathing on her own,” he said, turning to look at Natasha. His eyes were red. “It’s good. Fury said the doctors were optimistic. I don’t know. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. It’s way too early.”

Natasha tried to smile. She didn’t know what to say; she knew nothing about these things. And she hadn’t got over the shock of finding out that Clint was a dad. In part, she felt betrayed. A petty feeling, but there it was. No matter how she rationalised it, it still stung that he hadn’t trusted her with it. She told herself that Clint’s safety (and by extension _her_ safety) depended on keeping his family safe, and that meant keeping them secret, because what people didn’t know couldn’t be used against you. It didn’t sit quite right with her that Clint had exposed himself to that kind of risk, but that was another issue… and he hadn’t quite had her training. 

But Clint was a dad. Idiotic and unpractical as it was, it still couldn’t be bad.

“I should have been there,” Clint whispered again. “I shouldn’t have come here…”

This wouldn’t do. Natasha let go of his hand and stood up.

Clint looked confused at her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to get you home.” She walked over to the table where all their gear was still laid out, putting ammunition in her belt and making sure her guns were loaded.

“What?” Clint got on his feet. 

Natasha ignored his question, putting the weapons in their holsters. She gave him a quick look. “Don’t do anything stupid. I expect you to still be in one piece when I get back.”

With that she turned on her heel and left before he had time to properly register what had happened. She really hoped she knew what she was doing. And that he’d still be there when she got back.

* * *

The transatlantic flight from Budapest to New York was the longest Natasha had ever experienced. Not only because it was a commercial flight, with stewardesses and screaming babies and small beverages trollies, but because the world as she knew it had been completely turned upside-down in the last 24 hours and now she had nothing to do than to sit there and think about it. 

And not just the world for that matter. Her entire self-conception was turned on its side.

She had blown the mission. On purpose. She had killed the target they were sent to extract. A bullet between the eyes, easy enough, but it hadn’t gone unnoticed. In total, she had left eighteen bodies behind as she had shot her way out. It had been efficient, though. No target meant no need for them to be in Budapest, which meant Clint could go home. To Laura. And his children.

_Children!_

Clint’s children.

It was still surreal.

When she had come back to the attic she had been covered in blood. Clint had been so mad at her when she’d told him what she’d done — more because she’d gone alone than that she’d ruined months of work, but he had yelled at her for at least twenty minutes. She didn’t know what the consequences of her actions would be – depending on how difficult Clint’s boy was to babysit, she thought she could get away with just a stern look – but Clint taking her hand at lift-off would make her able to handle whatever they threw at her. She had done the right thing, end of discussion.

When they landed, jetlagged and tired, an unmarked car was waiting for them. Or, an unmarked car was waiting for Clint. Natasha didn’t know when he had called ahead, but he must have at some point.

He stopped a couple of steps from the car, turning to Natasha with an almost embarrassed expression. 

“I’m going to…” he said. “I don’t—Thank you. For this.”

Natasha nodded, smiling slightly. “Send me a picture, and, ehm, tell them ‘hi’ from me?”

Clint looked curiously at her; Natasha could hear how strange those things sounded coming from her, but then, all of this was strange. 

“I will,” he said. 

He took a step towards the car, but then he turned back and hugged her. He held her so tight it hurt and made it hard to breathe. 

“Go to your girls,” she whispered in his ear, patting him gently on the back. 

“Thank you,” he mumbled again before letting go. “Thank you.”

“Go,” she ordered, almost pushing him away, but before he got out of reach, she grabbed his hand.

“Make up your mind, Romanoff,” he said, smiling. 

“I…” She hesitated. “I won’t tell anyone. They’re still safe.”

He squeezed her hand, and his smile became so much more affectionate. “I know.”

With that, he let go and got into the car. Finally. 

Natasha watched the car drive off, feeling just a little bit… lost.

* * *

Natasha’s phone rang as she was trying to unlock her front door while carrying groceries. She sighed; none of her extensive training – neither in the Red Room nor at SHIELD – had ever prepared her for this kind of bodily contortion. Still, she managed to get inside without dropping anything, and fish her phone out of her jacket pocket. The display said _Barton, Clint_.

She sighed in relief. There hadn’t been any sign of life from Clint in nineteen days, not since they had landed on American soil. It wasn’t like she had expected him to send her a baby picture, because it would be insanely stupid and risky to do so, but that didn’t stop her from worrying. And feeling a little bit disappointed.

“Hello, stranger,” she said, pressing the phone to her ear with the shoulder as she manoeuvred the groceries to the kitchen. 

“ _Nat!_ ” 

Natasha smiled. Clint sounded happy, and if she’d had any remaining doubts or fears, they all went away. She could practically hear him smile.

“ _I’m sorry I haven’t called—_ “

“Don’t start,” she said. “How are you?”

“ _It’s good, it’s… It’s great. We got to take her home yesterday._ ” Clint kept on talking. He talked about medical things, he talked about how iny-tiny the girl’s hands and feet were, and he swore she already smiled at him. He told her about Cooper – who apparently was three years old – and all the cute things he had said when he’d first seen his sister. 

Natasha listened, and hummed and chuckled in the right places, as she unpacked groceries. She had never heard Clint talk like this, and it was such a contrast to the sleep deprived, worried man she had left at the airport. 

“ _You should see her, Nat,_ ” Clint ended with. “ _She’s a fighter._ ”

“Like her dad.”

“ _No, like her mom. Laura’s amazing. I’ve just been a mess._ ”

Natasha couldn’t help that she chuckled softly. “Yeah, I know. I saw you.”

“ _I’m sorry I blew the mission._ ”

“No, _I_ blew the mission. I even have the paperwork to prove it.”

“ _Did you get in much trouble?_ ” Clint asked, sounding worried.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“ _I’ll talk to Fury._ ”

“No, it’s fine.”

“ _Are you sure?_ ”

“Yes,” Natasha said. She was on probation; the only reason she was _just_ on probation was probably thanks to Fury’s interference. There was no way she would tell Clint that.

“ _Okay, good._ ” Clint sounded relieved. “ _I just wanted to call and say that everything’s… that everything’s okay. It’s fine. We’re fine, don’t worry about us._ ”

“I wasn’t wo—“

“ _Bullshit._ ”

Natasha smiled. “Fine. Tell them hi from me, okay?”

“ _I will. Laura says hi too, and that you have to come and visit soon, because she needs to give you a big hug._ ”

“Oh…” Natasha froze as she was about to put the milk in the fridge.

Clint giggled. “ _Don’t worry, I told her you weren’t too big on the hugging._ ”

“That wasn’t—“

“ _Nat._ ”

“I hate you.”

“ _Hate you too._ ”

Natasha grinned. “It’s good hearing from you.”

“ _I promise to report in at least once a week from now on._ ”

“You better.”

They said their good byes. Clint promised again to call more often, and Natasha promised the same, knowing fully well that neither of them were going to follow through. She hung up, exhaling deeply. It surprised her just how tense she had been, and how much she must have worried without really knowing it, because now she felt as if the weight of the world was lifted from her shoulders. Clint was okay. His family was okay.

With a smile on her face, she finished unpacking the groceries, more sure than ever that she’d made the right call in Budapest.


	3. A debt

The first thing Natasha did after finishing her questioning of Loki and reporting in, was to find Nick Fury. The interrogation had gone well, she had got the next step of Loki’s plan, but that wasn’t even close to the most important part of information she had extracted. 

“Sir,” she called out, jogging to catch up with Fury who was on his way to the science bridge to talk to Dr Banner.

Fury stopped, turning around. “What is it?”

“Can we talk in private?”

Fury raised his eyebrows.

Natasha looked around; the hallway was empty, but she still stepped closer and lowered her voice. “It’s about Operation Nest Box.”

Fury seemed to hesitate for a moment, but he nodded and they went to a close-by utility room. It wasn’t huge, but it had a door and probably very little surveillance.

“We need to up their protection,” Natasha said. “And tell her.”

Fury towered over her due to the lack of space, pinning her down with his eye. They had discussed and argued twice already about keeping what was going on with Clint from Laura – once over the phone just after Natasha had found out Clint had been compromised, and once when she had come back to the States with Dr Banner – but in the end they had decided that it would do more harm than good to tell Clint’s family before they knew more. 

“Why?” asked Fury.

Natasha fought the urge to answer ‘because I say so’ as if she was talking to a five-year-old. Instead she inhaled through her nose and met his eye. 

“Agent Barton has betrayed my trust,” she said, the words feeling like a betrayal in themselves. She knew it wasn’t him, she knew it was Loki. She knew Clint would never do it if he was himself. But, _by God_ , it still hurt. She trusted him like she trusted no one else; she had trusted him with her deepest, darkest secrets, and now Loki knew them. 

Fury didn’t seem to get the implications, so Natasha went on:

“Loki knew things about me no one but Barton knew. He wouldn’t give those things freely, and if Loki has my secrets, he has Clint’s too.”

Fury’s eye widened slightly, and he nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He left the room, but stopped turning in the door. “Call her, if you think it’s the right thing to do.”

Natasha nodded, closing the door behind him. She had no idea if she thought it was the right thing to do. Not really. It felt like it was, especially since they were going to enforce even harder restriction on the family, but how could she possibly tell for sure? She had never talked to Laura, and now she was going to bring her terrible news. Five years ago, shortly after Natasha had found out about Clint’s family, Clint had made her promise that she’d be the one to tell Laura if he happened to die during a mission. At the time she hadn’t thought about it, but now she suddenly wondered if he had informed Laura of this. 

Natasha slid down the door to the floor, and, before she could change her mind, she called the Iowa number she had memorised by heart.

“ _Hi, this is Cooper._ ”

Her heart stopped beating for a moment, she could swear it. 

“Hello,” she said, her voice shaking. “Is your mom home?”

“ _Yes._ ”

Cooper called out for his mom, probably putting down the phone. Clint’s son. She had talked to Clint’s son. He was real. Natasha took a deep breath to compose herself as she waited for Laura to come to the phone. 

She heard someone pick up the phone. “ _Laura._ ”

“My name’s Natasha Romanoff.” Natasha paused, waiting for a reaction, but all she got was silence. Complete and utter silence. Clint had obviously told Laura what it would mean if she called. Damn him!

“He’s still alive,” Natasha said, when she found her voice again and she could hear Laura exhale loudly. “He’s still alive, but he’s not himself. He’s… possessed, and we’re going to up your protection.” 

“ _Are we in danger?_ ”

“Yes.”

“ _Is he? _”__

Natasha closed her eyes, whispering: “Yes.”

There was a long silence. If Natasha hadn’t heard the children ( _God_ , she had to get Clint back!) she would have thought the line had gone dead. 

“ _Natasha?_ ” Laura’s voice was weak.

“Yes?”

“ _I never thanked you for bringing him back from Budapest._ ”

An almost-laugh escaped Natasha. “It was my pleasure. I’d done it faster if I’d known you existed to begin with.”

Actually, she wouldn’t have let him come with her if she had known. Or she thought she wouldn’t have.

“ _Can I please ask you to do it again?_ ”

Natasha took another deep breath. “Yes.”

* * *

“You’re a spy, not a soldier, and now you want to wade into a war. Why?” Clint said, quietly. “What did Loki do to you?”

”He didn’t, I just…” 

Clint sat there, looking at her as if she was the one who’d had Loki take over her entire being and not him. It was Clint. The one she had told about what happened in Sao Paulo, the one who she knew would walk through fire for her. The first person other than herself that she had trusted. For a fraction of a second, Loki had taken that from her. That’s what he had done to her. When he had uttered Drakov’s name, she had swayed. For a horrible moment she had actually felt betrayed by the only person she really knew cared about her. That alone was enough reason to kill Loki, but that wasn’t why she wanted to go after him. She wanted to go after him because his mere existence now threatened Clint’s family. Three people she had never met, and barely spoken to. Loki had to go before he ruined everything.

“Natasha,” Clint whispered, prompting her to talk by buffing his knee against hers. 

“I’ve been compromised,” she said, a small part of her actually hoping he would understand the implications of that. Then she took a breath, turning back to him. “I got red in my ledger, I’d like to wipe it out.”

Loki’s words echoed in her head ( _You think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?_ ) and she had to give him right. She wasn’t overly haunted by her past, but as she had told Loki, she had a debt to pay and freeing Clint from under Loki’s control wasn’t even close to enough to repay him for what he had done for her. Saving his family would be a step on the way. 

“You should call Laura,” Natasha said, determined to change the subject. 

Clint blinked. “Fury told her?”

“I told her,” she said. “Because we’ve moved them.”

All the colour drained from Clint’s face. “What did I—“

“Nothing,” Natasha said, quickly. “Loki was in your head, we didn’t know how, so we took precautions.”

Clint leaned forward, hiding his face in his hands. Natasha put her hand on his back. 

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “They’re safe. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

After a moment Clint sat up straight again, and got of the bunk. He looked devastated, worse than she had ever seen him, and she almost regretted telling him. Just almost. Laura needed to hear from him, and he clearly needed to hear from her. 

“Call her,” she said.

He nodded, looking around for a phone. She handed him one, and was about to leave, but he took her by the wrist. 

“Stay,” he begged. 

Natasha nodded, sitting back down on the bunk, feeling slightly uncomfortable. Clint never called home when they were out on missions, at least not when she was around. Actually, she had never heard him call home at all, even though she knew he did it before they left on a mission.

“Agent Barton reporting in,” Clint said with the phone to his ear, his voice trembling. “Yes. No, no, don’t cry. I’m okay, I’m all right. Don’t cry.” He looked up, meeting Natasha’s eyes. “Yes, ma’am, she did. She hit me in the head. I can’t, I can’t talk long. I will be back soon. I’m sorry. Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. Tell them that—Yes, ma’am… I love you too.”

He hung up, breathing out slowly. “She told me to tell you ‘Thank you’.”

“Do you always call her ‘ma’am’?” Natasha asked, amused.

“She was in the army when we met; it sort of stuck,” Clint said, smiling a crooked smile. “It’s a convenient habit when I call from work.”

“Are they all right?”

Clint nodded. “I think so. Thank you for thinking about them, for making sure I didn’t—“

“Hey, stop that,” Natasha said, leaning forward to be able to take his hand. “Don’t do that. Go and wash up, put some water on your face or something. Then we’ll find Fury, or whoever, to make sure you get to put that arrow in Loki’s eye.”

“I’d like that,” Clint said. “I’d like that a lot.”

* * *

Natasha sat on the porch swing, watching the sun set over Iowa. It was so calm and quiet here; she couldn’t hear any traffic or see any other artificial light than the ones coming from inside the house behind her. She liked it. It was the perfect contrast to the chaos she had left behind in New York; Loki’s aliens might be dead, but the city was in ruin. That was for Stark to clean up, though. She was done with it for now.

As soon as Thor had taken Loki back to Asgard (or wherever) she had taken Clint – or Clint had taken her, she wasn’t sure – home, to peace and quiet. To a different type of chaos. To a completely different kind of world. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this out of place. Yesterday, before they had arrived, before Clint had parked the car next to the barn, telling her that he was planning on renovating it this summer, she had thought she had a fairly good grasp of reality – demigods and all. Now she wasn’t quite as sure.

She had known about Clint’s family for years by now, but it had still been completely overwhelming to see her partner with his family. It still was. Clint was supposed to be like her, orphaned and alone. Except he had never been alone for as long as she had known him. He had always had this, and right now he was upstairs, helping Laura put the children to bed. It was a task he had seemed more than thrilled to take on. Natasha knew Clint like the back of her hand, she knew his thought patterns and could predict his moves out in the field, yet she had never seen him like this. Not even close. Still she felt this was the most Clint he ever was. 

The door to the porch opened, and Clint stepped out. He was carrying two open beer bottles and a peaceful smile. He handed her one of the bottles without a word and sat down next to her on the swing.

“Mission completed?” Natasha asked. 

“Successfully so,” said Clint. “They didn’t want to put their heads down, but once they did, they were out in under five seconds.”

“And Laura?”

“Taking a moment.”

Natasha didn’t know what that meant, but didn’t ask. She sipped her beer and looked back out into the now almost complete darkness. Laura was a mystery to her. She had expected some sort of… distancing? Jealousy? Suspicious? Something. Natasha was, after all, the woman who more or less took Clint from her, even if not romantically. From Natasha’s experience with women, everyone was rival, but Laura had shown nothing of that. Instead Natasha had received a big hug, and an offer to stay. Laura had welcomed the assassin with so much death in her past into her home, and let her play with her children. It was remarkable. Laura was remarkable. They all were. This whole thing was.

“Is everything okay, Nat?”

They had been sitting in silence for a long time. It was one of the things she liked best with Clint’s company; their ability to be quiet together without it being strange or awkward. Natasha looked at him, he looked concerned and tired – but a good kind of tired. 

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she said, feeling far more insecure than she ought to. “For trusting me with them.”

“It’s not that I didn’t before. It’s just…”

“I know. You don’t have to explain.”

Clint smiled briefly. “Can I ask you something?”

Natasha nodded.

“Were there many aliens in Budapest?”

Natasha burst out laughing hitting him on the thigh.

“Ouch!” Clint whined, but then he chuckled. “It’s just, I mean, I know I was a bit unfocused because of Lila and that, but I think I would have remembered the aliens.”

“Idiot.”

Clint’s smirk softened into a smile. “It was a bit like Budapest, though; you blowing a mission to bring me back home.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s _everything_ ,” Clint said. “I got to help Lila brush her teeth tonight, and Coop showed me the comic book he’s drawing… If you think your debt is to me, then can stop. I’m the one who owes you.”

Natasha didn’t know what to say. She _had_ blown a second mission for Clint’s sake, but unlike in Budapest it hadn’t been a choice this time. That time, five years ago, she’d made the active decision to kill the target; this time, when Coulson had called, she had just reacted. She had convinced herself that she had been following orders – she had been called in, after all – but here on a porch in Iowa, with Clint alive and smiling next to her, then perhaps she could admit to having reacted on impulse and emotions. 

“The one thing that can be more important than a mission,” Natasha muttered to herself, bringing the beer to her lips. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” said Natasha, shaking her head and picking at the label of the beer bottle. She was genuinely surprised that she had said that, and how bitter she had sounded. 

Clint gently buffed his knee against hers, but didn’t say anything. He waited, patiently, until she felt ridiculous for being quiet. It was all in the past, and this was Clint. Clint, who had trusted her with his family, with the secret that was more important to him than his life. Clint, who had betrayed all _her_ secrets, who had tried to kill her. 

Clint, who kept saving her, over and over again.

She sighed. “It’s something they used to tell us in the Red Room – the only thing that can become more important to you than your sworn duty is children; the single biggest threat to a spy is motherhood. So they made sure that wouldn’t happen to any of their girls.”

Clint frowned, at first, but as it dawned on him what she said, his eyes grew wide and his moth opened in shock. 

“They—they sterilised you,” he stuttered.

Natasha couldn’t say if it was a question or a statement, but she nodded. 

“They called it our graduation ceremony.”

“Nat, I’m so sorry.” Clint almost breathed out the words. 

Natasha shrugged. “It’s convenient, even if they appeared to be wrong. There are other things that can have you abandon missions.”

“I know you’re not a fan,” he said, softly, putting away his beer, “but I feel like hugging you right now. Is that okay?”

A short laugh escaped Natasha, and she nodded. Clint pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her in a big hug she could just disappear in. It felt surprisingly nice, and she buried her face deep into his flannel ( _flannel!_ ) shirt.

“Thank you for blowing missions for me,” Clint whispered.

“You started it,” she mumbled.

Clint let go. He smiled, but she could tell he was still a bit uneasy about what he had just learned about her. Natasha realised that she wasn’t uncomfortable with him knowing, though. It took her by surprise, not because it was some dark secret – she didn’t have many regrets in life, and agreeing to be sterilised wasn’t one of the few she had – but because it was personal, and she didn’t do personal. _They_ didn’t do personal, really. Still, here they were, sitting on his porch, with his family ( _family!_ ) inside the house, and she had just indirectly told him that she couldn’t have biological children of her own. She trusted him, and knowing that she still did that felt good.

Natasha smiled, reaching for her beer again. When he did the same, she clinked the bottles together. Maybe, in the end, her instructors had been right. The one thing that could have you blow a mission was family – they had just had a very limited idea of what “family” was.


End file.
